


The Mundane Memoirs

by Ardwynna



Series: The Path the Planets Tread [5]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen, implied rape, short story collection, world-building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-09-24 23:10:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9791282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardwynna/pseuds/Ardwynna
Summary: Armies invade, plates drop, Meteor falls, cities rise and burn and rise again. Not everyone has a sword for the fight. Most people simply look for ways to keep on living. Story #6: Heiress - A lowly stockbroker tries to do her best for her clients, even after they're dead.





	1. Li's Tailoring Emporium

Eight black shirts, steamed and starched, lay on the bench. Two fine old coats, one leather, the other wool, hung on the rack for one last inspection after recent repairs. The small TV glowed high up on the wall, volume low and subtitles on. Old Li Chang, wrinkled and hunched, shuffled in and began to inspect the work. Mei held her breath and waited. 

He fingered the material of the shirts, fine breathable cotton. He angled a light and leaned in to examine every stitch and seam. He turned a shirt around, examining the back. “Very smooth,” he said, voice cracking. Gnarled fingers crooked with age and arthritis traced the line on the right. He opened the shirt and examined further. All seams were neat. All threads were clipped. He set the shirt on a rack and held the lower end down with one hand. With the other he punched straight through. Mei jumped.

“And there it is,” Li Chang said, wiggling his fingers through the hole. “Effortless.” He withdrew his hand and gestured for Mei to come over. She looked up but didn’t dare say a word. 

Li Chang smiled and patted her head. Mei wriggled away. “Gramps, come on.”

The old man laughed. “You’ve done well, little flower.”

Mei rolled her eyes. “I hope so. Only took me like two dozen practice runs.”

“We have a reputation to uphold, Xiu Mei,” Li Chang said, dropping in some of the old Wutainese village lingo that Mei understood but had trouble speaking. “And he is one of our best customers.”

Mei glanced up at the tv in the corner, pondering the irony of the fact. “What time is he coming in?” 

“Half past five exactly. He is usually on time, unless you’ve seen any cause for delay on the news. Come, child, help me fold these. These old hands don’t move like they did.”

“You sit, grandpa,” Mei said, guiding him to her seat. She laid out tissue paper and folded each shirt to match the last, wrapping them all in tissue. The coats she slipped into suit bags, checking the labels to ensure they were straight. 

Li Chang sat watching the TV and his granddaughter in turn. He nodded to himself now and then and looked well pleased. 

“Grandpa,” Mei said, “It’s getting on to six. He’s late.”

“For him, we wait, Xiu Mei. He will be along.”

At five minutes to six there was still no sign. A couple customers had dropped by in the interim, bringing suits and skirts from the department stores for alterations. Mei sighed and glanced up at the black and white photograph occupying a high shelf of honor. 

Li Chang saw her gaze and chuckled. “We had slow days in the old shop too, you know.” 

“But a better business, I bet,” Mei said, flicking the tag on their latest bit. “Proper custom orders instead of all this fiddly tucking and hemming.”

Li Chang nodded. “We were established in the old town. But there is a price for starting over. And it is not so bad. Soon you will be in that fancy design school. Didn’t have that in the old town, did we?”

“I’m still working on my application, Grandpa,” Mei said, sinking lower on her stool. 

“It will be fine.” Li Chang gestured to the box, to the hanging coats. “I bet you can already outdo everybody else who is applying. He will agree.”

“He might if he ever comes to pick up his stuff,” Mei said, swinging her feet back and forth. Six already. Time to close. 

“A few minutes more,” Li Chang said. “If he is late it is for good reason.” 

The TV station logo flared across the screen, announcing a breaking news bulletin. The anchors were stern but quiet. Mei glanced at the remote but the volume made little difference to her grandfather. She leaned in to read. “Midair attack,” she said in Wutainese, translating. “Stopped by him.”

“Of course,” Li Chang said, rising. “We might as well close up the shop.” 

“What is that?” Mei shrieked. A shaky camera zoomed in on a grainy image, catching fleeting bits of the fight. A large white blur floated through the air midst the smoke and the flames, leaving destruction in its wake.

Li Chang turned and leaned in. “Probably him,” he said, going back to the shop shutters. “Even back in the Old War he was full of surprises.” Mei gave the TV one last glance and rose to help with the locking up. 

“Wait,” someone shouted. Heavy footfalls sounded on tile. A gloved hand caught the shutters in the last inch. Mei jumped back, blocking her grandfather from view. 

“Hey, we’re locking up,” she said as the metal blinds were lifted. They didn’t have to reach his face for her to know who they were dealing with. 

“General,” Li Chang said, “you’re late.”

“I am sorry,” the man said in perfect Wutainese. He bowed low. Pale hair spilled over his shoulder, catching the light. Mei stared, transfixed, but he smelled of smoke. 

“No problem at all,” Li Chang said. “We saw the news.”

“Yes, about that.” The General glanced around, standing straight and tall in a fine leather coat only a little different from the one hanging in the suit bag on the rack. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” Li Chang had switched back to Wutainese. “Mei, let the man in.”

“Yes, Grandpa,” Mei said, yanking the blinds, although it was little more than a formality. Stiff from battle, the man took a step inside. Mei let the blinds fall with a clatter behind him again. 

“Xiu Mei,” Li Chang said. 

“Oops. Sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” the man said. “I… appreciate the privacy.” He cocked his head at Mei and blinked. “Is… Are you…?”

“Yes, little Xiu Mei,” Li Chang said, “my granddaughter.”

“Little Xiu Mei?” The General said, looking again. “Who was always in the backroom doing her homework?” He held his hand out around hip height. “You’ve grown some.” 

Mei coughed. “Uh, your shirts?”

“Oh, yes, the shirts.”

“Packed and waiting,” Li Chang said, gesturing to the table. “Would you like to try one on?” 

“No need, I know your work,” the General said. Mei swallowed. 

“It’s not my work this time, General,” Li Chang said, gesturing with a tilt of his head. The General looked behind him. 

“Yours, Miss Li?” 

Mei nodded. Damn, the man was tall. And his eyes were really weird. She had never seen him this close up before, always staying hidden in the back room, out of sight and out of the way. But he turned back to her grandfather again. “Is she taking over the business?”

“In due time,” Li Chang said, opening the box. “She will go to fashion school first. Learn the new ways for new times.”

The General looked back at Mei. She nodded. “It’s why we moved here,” she said. “For the schools.” She held her ground and did not look away, did not look down. 

The General nodded. “So you’ll be learning how to design things from the ground up?” he asked.

Mei blinked. “I… guess so?”

The General cleared his throat and looked at the shirt Li Chang had unfolded for him. “You can see for yourself the quality of her work. I taught her the family ways and watched every stitch. Try it out.” 

The General took the shirt in both hands, careful and intent. Mei leaned against the work table, feet flat on the floor. The man turned the shirt around, checking front and back. He fingered the seam and then, just as her grandfather had done, punched it. 

The fabric parted with no effort along the hidden seam and just as easily snapped back into place. “Magnetic clasps?”

“The finest and lightest on the market,” Li Chang said. He gestured to Mei. “Her idea. Will it suit?”

The General blinked and stared back at Mei. “It will suit perfectly, I think, and I trust the bill reflects the improvements. No unfair discounts now.” He folded the shirt up with military precision and laid it back in its tissue wrapping. “Um, Miss Li?” he said, switching back to the continental tongue. “How soon will you be finished with design school?”

Mei leaned harder on the table. “Uh, I haven’t even applied yet. I still need a recommendation, and I’m putting together my portfolio.”

The General frowned, but not at her. “And the course is how long?”

“A four year degree, Sir.” 

“I can’t wait that long.” He shoved his hair back from his face and looked around with a heavy sigh. “Do you think you, and your grandfather of course, do you think you could come up with something else for me? You’ve done a good job making my shirts.”

“Whatever you need, General,” Li Chang said, though Mei wasn’t sure how much he had actually understood.

The General glanced at the closed shutters again. “You saw the news?” he said in Wutainese and gestured at the TV.

“Yes, quite a battle. And you with many tricks up your sleeve, I believe.”

The General’s lips tightened a bit. “Not my sleeves, exactly,” he said. He glanced around again and in a rather delicate fashion, raised the hem of his long buckled coat. Mei swallowed. Above the tops of the man’s high boots were the singed shreds of a fine garment now ripped to indecent tatters. Mei thought of the white blur in the flames, and the rhythmic billows of the smoke as it whorled away. The General looked right at Mei. “Can you design me some pants?”

Mei bit the inside of her mouth to keep the smile from getting too big. “Might there be a recommendation in it for me if I can?”

“Miss Li, if you can keep me from walking around after battle with cold air blowing up my behind, I’ll call the Dean of Admissions myself.”

Mei got her pencil and let the grin reign. “Let’s see what we can do.”


	2. A Nibelheim Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Small towns are full of secrets. So your wife is cheating on you. It's not the end of the world.

Ingrid was cheating on him. Garth was sure of it. With who, he hadn’t worked out just yet, but there were only so many contenders. He sat alone on an evening more often than not, usually with a fire going because Nibelheim was just that kind of place, and waited for Ingrid to get home from her ‘Ladies Sewing Circle’, as she called it. She could call it whatever she liked, she never did seem to get much sewing done. 

Fuck if it mattered. Not like they had much of a marriage anyway. They ran their store, threw corn out for the chickens in the backyard, were civil, if not too friendly with the neighbors, and paid their respects to old town traditions the best they could. Keeping up appearances was key. Appearances were all that mattered here. Appearances were pretty damn dull. 

Sometimes when the days were growing short, and green-tinged cold flurries swept down from Mt. Nibel right into town, Garth was tempted to hang up the wood-chopping axe and walk the Hel away. Out of this choky little town, away from the quiet ‘comfortable’ living, away from stone-faced neighbors who never got too close, away from Ingrid and whoever she was cheating on him with, consequences be damned. Husbands walked out all the time. It wouldn’t be hard for her to concoct some sort of story. He had enough money put away, and he knew Ingrid did too. They’d be fine splitting up. It could even be amicable, as city lawyers liked to say. 

But he’d signed the paperwork, and big city lawyers didn’t tend to look too kindly on breach of contract. Easiest way to lose everything that he’d worked for and more. Garth poked the fire and hoped Ingrid was enjoying herself. At least one of them should. The light through the window took on a reddish cast, stunning for evening this time of year. Night fell fast in cold mountain towns. Garth waited for the Ingrid and the silent noise. 

The Hendersons next door argued a lot. Garth didn’t think they realized that the town walls were actually kind of thin. And sound carried in the clear mountain air. Astrid Henderson wanted to leave town. She wanted to move to the city, like a lot of folks probably did. “We’ve got children to think about,” she said. She said it a lot. Garth stretched himself back in his chair and closed his eyes. 

He and Ingrid, they had no kids. No obligations that couldn’t, theoretically, be ended. The Hendersons had two little girls, both under ten, quiet, watchful little things with pigtails. Garth saw them sometimes, walking behind their mother on the days she came into the store, scarf tied around her head Old Nibel-style. It hid the bruises. Small towns kept their secrets.

Garth was on the point of reheating something from the fridge for dinner, one of Ingrid’s sad takes on Nibel cuisine, when she burst through the door. “Garth,” she said. She was breathless and flushed. The sewing circle must have been vigorous this afternoon. “Garth, come outside. Something’s happening.”

Garth hefted himself upwards in his seat. “What, town on fire?”

“Might as well be,” Ingrid said and flew back out the door. Red light flooded the room. Garth was curious enough to hurry with his boots.

Half the town was outside and the other half was peeking from behind curtains. Red fire hung high above, blazing and monstrous. Garth felt his jaw drop and was powerless to stop it. “Whaddaya think it is?” Ingrid asked. 

“Beats the Hel out of me, love,” said Mrs. Engard. Garth snorted. That was a first. Mrs. Engard knew everybody’s business. A din from the Inn interrupted his thoughts. 

“There’s something on the radio,” Jason shouted from the Inn. The crowd surged to the door, jamming the small entrance. Too far to the back to get in, Garth was stuck outside with Ingrid, Mrs. Engard and the Hendersons, latecomers to the party. 

“What are they saying?” Mrs. Engard asked. “I can’t hear a thing.” Ingrid shushed her. “Don’t you shush me, young woman.”

“Mrs. Engard,” Garth said, “we all want to know what’s going on.”

Ingrid tiptoed up, trying to see over shoulders. He caught a glimpse of her neck, with a new red mark peeking out from under her collar. It wasn’t important. Faces turned back to them to deliver the news. “A meteor,” said Jason, shouting above the crowd. “It’s a meteor, and it’s big. Real big.”

“Is it going to hit us?” Mr. Henderson asked. Astrid pulled her girls close to her side, hiding her face behind loose hair. The canned voice of the radio came again over the crowd, unintelligible for the distance. Garth knew from Jason’s face what the answer was. They all did. Garth stumbled backwards, seeking air. Ingrid reached for him. He batted her hands away. Appearances didn’t really matter much anymore. 

“How long do we have?” someone shouted. 

Jason shook his head. “Days, maybe.”

The cries went up. “Can’t Shinra do something?”

“They have rockets, don’t they?”

“A barrier, maybe a really strong barrier.”

Garth stumbled towards the well in the center of town, seeking a place to lean on. Little Hilda Henderson’s big brown eyes followed him as he went. He stared and as children do, she stared back. Days. They had days. All his plans, all his idle thoughts about leaving, about Ingrid, none of it mattered. 

“Fuck the contract,” he said, climbing up the short tower. “I’m leaving town,” he announced. “Don’t know where I’m going, Costa, maybe. But if the Planet’s number is up, damned if I’m going to die here in this hick town with you backwater folk.”

“Yeah, fuck you, Cooper,” Henderson shouted. Astrid drew back and away from him, tugging little Hilda as she went. 

“And my name’s not Cooper,” Garth said. “It’s Copeland. Not exactly Old Nibel, is it?”

Ingrid stepped forward in the crowd, chin up, eyes straight but she said nothing. It was Mrs. Engard next to her who spoke. “My real name is Lillian Devereux. Did you sign a contract too?”

A ripple went through the crowd, faces lighting up, eyes opening wide. Whispers grew to outright pandemonium. “They told us to pretend we had roots here.”

“Yeah, us too, that we were moving back to an old family home.”

“My people are from Kalm, originally.”

Jason stepped out, shaking his head. “Is anybody here the real deal? Anybody?” 

Silence. Then uproar. 

They lied, Garth thought. Shinra lied. They lied to us. They made us lie. We lived a lie. He felt rather than saw Ingrid climb up beside him. Her face was up to the blaze above, red and gold and sad. She sat and leaned back against the well. 

“So what was your name?” Garth asked. “Before they assigned us together?”

“Isabel. I was Isabel.” She closed her eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

Garth’s head snapped around in her direction. His hands tightened on the well stand while he stared. “It’s not mine, is it?”

Ingrid – Isabel – shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

Garth felt his shoulders slump. It didn’t matter. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, gaze roaming out to the crowd below. People were coming clean about the names they had signed away, about Shinra money in secret accounts, about sentences commuted or suspended for signing on dotted lines, about family they had not spoken to in years, who thought they were dead, who maybe they’d try to find now before time ran out. 

“They lied to us,” ‘Henderson’ was saying, over and over. “They motherfucking lied to us and for what? To trick a couple of dumb travellers passing through twice a year? Fuck’s this all about?”

‘Astrid Henderson’ raised her head. Her face had never been a pretty one, rather like the hatchet Garth knew he would never use again. Made of the same steel too, he now saw. “Don’t,” she started, “use that language in front of the children.” 

“The fuck does it matter now, woman?” Henderson roared, rearing over her. She stood her ground. She stood her ground, swung from the hips and punched him in the face. Maybe it was the surprise more than strength, but he hit the dirt all the same. The crowd cleared around him but hovered close for the show.

“Don’t. Use. That. Language!” ‘Astrid’ screamed. “It’s because of you and your stupid decisions we’ve been stuck here all these years.”

Henderson looked up from the dirt, dabbing with shaky fingers at the streak of blood trickling down from a fat lip. “The hell you think you’re doing, woman?”

‘Astrid’ drew herself straight up. “I’m going to Rocket Town,” she announced. “And I’m going to teach our girls their real names.” She turned around, holding her daughters by the hand, and walked away.

Her husband struggled in the dirt amidst the laughter. “They’ll send the Turks for you,” he said. “They’ll send the Turks for you!”

Ingrid – Isabel – slumped backwards against the well. “Shinra really will send the Turks, won’t they? Breach of contract?”

Garth shrugged. “They only have a few days. They can’t send the Turks after all of us.”

Isabel smiled. She was pregnant. Pregnant with a kid who would never see daylight, so it didn’t matter who the father was. “Where will you go?” Garth asked. 

She shrugged. “Got room in the truck to take me to Costa too?”

Garth – Damon, it had been so long, Damon – smirked. “I might.”


	3. Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To avoid the dangers of Mako, most people turn to alternative energy. Others...

There was oil in the North Seas. They had found it long ago but had no need of it then. Fossil fuels were so outdated, after all. Difficult to extract. Smoky when burnt. But the future proved a little less bright than imagined and the oil was needed again, so they drilled. There was coal in the hills so they mined. They laid pipelines for transport and refineries roared to life again. 

Wutai used its rivers. Their water god had blessed them in this. Of the thousand rivers that snaked through the mountains, following the ancient trails of Leviathan, they dammed a few for the turbines and lights. They never quite said they had been right all along, but anyone who spoke to them felt it. 

Where rains rarely fell, they harvested the light of day. They made black plains of their roofs and high places, and lit the darkness of night with a bit of true sun. And where neither river nor rain, nor sun nor earth provided, they set up their towers on their high mountains, and harnessed the wind. 

Fields of corn sprouted, not for eating. Sugar cane was grown, not for sweetening tea. They experimented with algae, with the atom and with waste, burning lights to keep lights burning, to ward off the dark though they could not remember why. 

And still, there were places where the lights did not shine again right away. Would not shine, not for water or for wind. It’s still stealing, the people said, still theft. Taking, taking, with nothing to give and even while they spoke, it was not truth they felt. Perhaps it was fear. There was remembrance of retribution that came from the skies, and the Planet’s shining mercy, an unexpected grace. 

But their voices were hushed, ignored and overruled. The future lay ahead and their way was the past, so they swallowed their words the way others would not swallow pride. And when the plague came they felt the truth of their fears. Cures mattered not. Other plagues would come. They left the great cities. They left the small towns. They left the small villages and the outposts on the plains. Where they went, few bothered to ask. If they gathered, no mapmaker cared. 

But at night, traveler, if you have lost your way, pray you see low lights in the distance, a bare flicker at the edge of a darkness that could swallow you whole. Seek those who ward off the night in their small ways. Be quiet, be respectful, and they may share their light with you. Their fuel is what they themselves can grow. Their lamps are shaped by human hands. Those who fear the Planet’s wrath make only the light they need.


	4. The Girl on the North Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet, distant village gets a newcomer, a survivor of the Wutai war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tie-in with Wutai Lullaby.

She came stumbling down the dirt road in the quiet of the morning. The sun and Chen were just barely up in time to see her stumbling on bleeding feet, her robe filthy, threadbare and singed. Chen glanced up the road but there was no one else. No smoke, no fire, no guns, no screams. For now she had come alone. 

“Come,” he said, “you are hurt. Come.” 

She shook her head and drew away at first, still stunned, still pained, perhaps not understanding his village tongue. He tried again, filling the bamboo dipper from the rain barrel near his door. He held it out to her at arm’s length. This much she must understand. 

She stared at the dipper with her arms around herself, clutching torn, blackened clothes against herself in the cold morning. Chen spoke again, slowly. “There is plenty if you want. Would you like breakfast? I was going to make tea.”

He did not have much beside his hut and his field, and no idea how long he would have even that, with the war coming down from the north. But they were his for now, and he would do what he liked with them. What he liked was what his mother would have done, to split his portion of rice in two, and put more water in the pot for the tea. 

She stayed outside after the first sip from the dipper. He had thought she would drink and drink and drink, which was no matter with the rivers nearby and the rains on their way. But she took only a few careful sips and stood swaying in the street, unable to move. 

Chen put his small stool out and invited her to sit while he prepared the morning meal. She was sitting when he came out again with a chipped cup and a bowl. Dark smears marked the trail where she had walked from the street. Her hands shook holding chopsticks and she ate only half of what he had brought. He sat in the doorway and spoke to her, wondering if she understood anything at all. 

He offered to tend her feet for her, but earned a blank stare, and then the sun was up and he was late for the day. “I will be back this evening,” he said. “There is rice inside if you get hungry. Nothing is hard to find. The house is not large.”

He paused often in his work that day to stare beyond the woods to the north. No smoke. No flames. He told Zhang and Liu of the girl on the road but they thought he was crazy, imagining things. Poor Chen, so lonely, with his parents dead and gone. They had seen no one, and the war was far away.

But the girl was still there when Chen checked at noontime with his flimsy excuse about checking the stove. She still sat on the bench and stared at the road. “I bet you like being off your feet,” Chen said. They were dirty still, but not bleeding so much. Perhaps Madame Zhao would use her materia shard, if he asked. Perhaps for pity, for need, she would waive her fee. “Rice?” he asked, and brought another bowl even though he received no reply.

That evening he sluiced himself off behind the house, to not offend her deadened eyes. She still had not moved, and she would not say a word. He wonder if she heard him at all, if the bombs and the guns had not shattered her ears. He brought her more rice for the evening, and she ate again, sparingly. Her hands shook less now. Hunger, he noted. He had had such days too. 

He stoked his small stove in the back to ward off the night’s chill. “It’s warm inside, if you would like to come in,” he said, keeping up the talk, weaving rushes in an old design. “I will put my mother’s sleeping mat by the fire.” On the high shelf, tucked away, he found the rest of the things, the few items he could not bring himself to sell, or the things that had no value. His mother’s plain kimono, solid, faded blue, a spotted mirror, the better half of a broken comb. 

When he woke in the morning there was some dirt on the sleeping mat, nothing that couldn’t shake out, but the girl was outside again, sitting on the stool. He pushed the bundle toward her, kimono, mirror and comb, with a pair of new woven sandals on top. “There is water to the back of the house, if you want to wash,” he said, giving her rice, and going his way. 

Zhang and Liu walked home with him that evening, joking about the wife Chen had imagined for himself. “She’s not a wife,” he said. “She came from the war.” And then they saw her. 

She was still on her stool, but washed now. Her hair was combed. She wore the old blue robe well, tied with her own smoke-stained obi. The sandals rested on the grass beside her, her feet washed and clean but still too raw for shoes. 

“Are you sure she’s real?” Liu asked, backing up the way he had come. 

“She may be a spirit,” said Zhang.

“I think she’s just from the north,” Chen said, “where the war is.”

Liu and Zhang exchanged a glance and went on their way, Liu to his parents, Zhang to his wife. Chen washed his face at the barrel and went inside. The floor was swept. The ashes at the stove were gone. The rice was warmed. He put up some tea and went to sit in the doorway. “Thank you for making the rice,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow I will catch us some fish for it.”

They carried on like this three days more, while word spread through the village of Chen’s spirit girl. He ignored the whispers, and the eyes on the back of his neck. He made an inquiry of Madame Zhao, who did not reduce her fee. It did not matter much in the end. By the end of one week, the girl was wearing his rush sandals with his mother’s blue kimono and her own dull yellow belt. He never saw her sleep. He never saw her move. But they were getting used to each other. The village would as well.

The first day he saw her inside was the first night it rained. She rose, stiff and slow, glanced in his direction and took her place on the mat in front of the stove. “It’s really pouring out there, isn’t it?” Chen said, pulling down the blinds. They stopped the water, not the wind. He poured her some tea and set it beside her before taking a seat in his own corner. They sat together and waited, listening to the fall of rain. 

Up till that point she had not spoken. He was not sure she could. But then, in the rain, lit by the weak flicker of fire, he heard her sing. It was an old song, one mothers sang to children, a song for sunshine when skies were dark overhead. She did not lift her head, hair spilling over her shoulder to hide her face. Her hair was darker than the head he remembered, the shadowed face was younger, and the words had a different edge to them, said in the northern way, but he knew the song all the same. He did not compliment her singing that evening, too stunned in the wind and the rain. She did not speak for two more days, but eventually she did, and she told him all. Or most. 

She had been walking for months, almost a year. The war had come and taken all her kin. She escaped on foot from the rubble and flames. And her name was Kimiko. She had come from the towns far north. She did not speak much, her voice still sore from the smoke and the pain. But it was enough. He began taking her to market when she was able to walk the distance again. He would not have much till the crop was in, but he sometimes had fish to sell. He bought her some pickles when she showed an interest, even though he worried her town tastes would make short work of them. She rationed them out instead with a sparing hand and a soft word in her crisp accents about the hard times near the war. Every morning she watched him go to the fields and he turned back to wave and watch her staring northward, looking for the smoke, for the flames. 

None ever came, and Kimiko became Kimiko, instead of Chen’s spirit wife. She kept house. She joined him in the field sometimes, learning the ways. And she cooked. By Leviathan, she cooked. A little kelp from the market, a little dried fish, and she set a broth before him that could have fortified him for a whole week. She asked him to build her a wooden contraption and he did, getting it wrong once or twice, but when it was done, she pounded rice, flattened and flattened it while he was out, and added noodles to the broth that whet his appetite as much as hard labor did. 

One day she took a pot to market, with their four chipped bowls. She set up on a mat at the very end, with a water bucket for the rinsing. Word spread that Chen’s spirit wife had a gifted hand, and Chen denied it. The wife part, that is. 

Almost a year passed. Chen bought a second stool, and a new comb for Kimiko. He would have bought her a new kimono, something bright and pretty, like the young woman she was instead of the old ghost she looked like in a dead woman’s faded blues, but she stopped him, citing a need to save money. He could not deny the sense of it. She made noodles all week from his stores of rice, sold them in the market in delicious broth, and sang like his mother in the rain. 

Madame Zhao eventually made a visit, claiming to a duty to see to the girl’s health, but there was no need by then. At least, not for feet. By then, with the noodles, with the increased rice in the field, they could afford the fee. Kimiko greeted her with town grace and begged counsel for something she did not want Chen to know. Chen never knew what transpired in the hut, banished to the yard while the women discussed their woman things, but Kimiko seemed at ease afterwards, and Madame Zhao had even reduced her fee. 

It was on the day of dead children he learned something more, when she brought home two sticks of precious incense, and lit them, and prayed. He waited outside, behind the house, stooping over his fishing lines until she was done. 

“Who do you pray for?” he asked. She turned away.

“I had a younger brother,” she said, and that should have been enough. But two sticks of incense stood in their bamboo vase, and she would not say more. 

Word came from the north some time later that the war was ended, and there was rice wine and soft flute music that night even though aside from Kimiko, the war had never touched them. The peace, the new conquest, that would not touch them either, most likely. Not a little rice paddy village with shallow water fish and an aging herb woman with the thinnest shard of green glass hanging from her neck. The Silver Demon would pass them by.

Kimiko heard the chatter in the streets and only Chen saw how she shivered. For a while her eyes were as he had first seen them, distant, nearly dead. He took her home with the half-sold pot of noodles, citing her health and the weather. 

He put tea in her hand and set her by the stove, where it was warm. She stared at the corner where her bowl of offertory rice had once rested, with two sticks of dragonsblood incense swirling smoke above. 

She stopped her shaking soon enough, draining her tea. For once Chen did not have to ask. “I saw him,” she said. “The Demon. He destroyed my town.” She set her cup down and wrapped her arms around herself. 

“Is he a monster, like they say?”

Kimiko closed her eyes. “Yes. Every bit. But he does not look it.”

Messengers came often now, making the month long journey to read their edicts in the square. Kimiko could read too, and write, and offered to show Chen how. He thought about accepting her offer but worried that it would be hard. “The messengers come here quickly, don’t they?” he said, when she had read him the latest news off the screed pasted on the temple wall. 

“They ride,” she said, “and they come straight here.” She had wandered for a long time, he learned, further north than she had started, till she could go no more. She must have sought death, he thought, because everyone knew it was worse the farther north one went. Nothing but smoke and ash and the silent dead. Many who had not died sought death after. Many women. 

But Kimiko had turned south again and found her way to his door, thank the great snake for the mercy, and she bathed and swept and cooked and sang. She and Madame Zhao called warm greetings out to each other in the street. The war did not touch them there, and the new peace hardly did either. The new money came, but with the noodles and broth and some occasional added fish, they earned their share of it. Chen was thinking of adding a room to the hut. He began to gather the wood. 

Kimiko watched him staking out the dirt, planning the distance between posts as she combed her hair. “Do you think,” she said and stopped.

Chen looked back at her, watching her framed like a picture in the doorway, new comb in her lap. “Think what?”

She passed her hand on his mother’s old kimono, threadbare from the start and now patched after such long use. “After we build the new room, should I get a new robe?”

Chen smiled. “We’ll get the prettiest one in the village,” he said. She smiled back at him, and kept combing her hair.


	5. The Planetarium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! Welcome to the Faremis Memorial Junon Planetarium. You are about to experience the natural beauty and wonder... of the Planet.

“Ugh,” Mara said, “Nobody said there’d be kindergartners here.”

Haruka barely looked up from her phone. “It’s school discount day, what do you expect?” A flicker of blue caught her eye and she did look up, raising the phone for cover. “Oh damn, Junon Suther High? What are they doing here?”

Mara rolled her eyes. “School discount day, didn’t you just say?” She looked up and down the row of blue blazers. “I don’t know why you ever wanted to go there, anyway. I’m not wearing any damn uniform until I’m ready to enlist.”

“But it’s a hot uniform,” Haruka said. “None of the regular military stuff looks half as good.” She spun around in the line and took a selfie against a wall of faceless blue and grey. 

“Oh. Em. Gee. Ru, look. Look up there.” Mara grabbed her friend by the arm and directed her gaze. “Look up in the line.”

Haruka scowled and stumbled in place, almost smashing into Wyndie Graham in front of her. “Mara, cut it- oh.”

Silver hair did stand out, especially above a dark blue blazer. “I know, right?” Mara said, beginning to hyperventilate. “I wonder how the seating works. Do you think we’ll get anywhere near them?”

Haruka sighed. “Woulda been a whole lot nearer if we’d gone to their school.” She frowned down at her phone. “I gotta take another selfie. I need that.” She reversed the camera again and tried to angle it for the paired silver heads.

“I want in too,” Mara said, stooping into the frame. 

“Ladies, ladies,” Mr. Rauche said, “keep the lines orderly.” But the word had already spread in whispers up and down.

“I hope they put them next to us. High school with high school, right?” Mara said, bouncing as they moved up. “You think if we got close enough we could talk to them?”

“Talk, shmalk, I’m trying to scout out their butts.” But the blazers went down just far enough. Haruka groaned her disappointment and settled for posting up her new pics on every online account she had. 

The line snaked around the giant columns of the lobby and the General’s twins disappeared around a curve. Mara nearly fell over angling for a good view. “I wonder why they had to come. Must be weird experiencing the _natural beauty and wonder_ of the Planet when their old man was trying to burn it.”

Ahead of them, Wyndie sighed. She glanced back and down. “Maybe that’s why they come? So they can appreciate something instead of hating it?” Next to her, Haile smacked her gum and agreed. 

“Nobody asked you, gigantor,” Mara said. 

Wyndie looked like she was ready to smash somebody but Haile stepped. “Girl, don’t even bother. They’re just obsessed with scouting ass.”

“Yeah, if their sister was still in school, you’d be looking too,” Haruka said to their combined backs. “Fucking weatherheads.” Wyndie stiffened, but then the double doors were flung open and everyone was shuffling inside. 

The seating did not work out like they had hoped. Junon Suther got planted between two kindergartens and a primary school, somewhere to the right of them in the circle. “Dammit,” Mara said, stretching up in her seat amidst the sea of chatter. 

Then the lights dimmed. “Welcome!” The voice boomed overhead, overriding all others. The dome overhead turned a backlit midnight blue. “Welcome to the Faremis Memorial Junon Planetarium!” The dome darkened and its fake sky grew scattered with stars. A hum of childish amazement went up from the crowd. 

“Ugh,” Mara groaned. “This is such a dumb place for a field trip.”

“I dunno,” said Haruka, leaning back in the cushy seat. “It’s not so bad.”

The sky overhead changed colors, cycling through a hasty dawn, sunshine and storms. A young girl in a flower crown ran away from them through a field of golden grass. A dense forest grew up around them. A flock of birds flew out to the distant sea. “You are sitting in an advanced observatory,” said the voice, “one of many around the world built in accordance with the principles of the Bugenhagen Planetary Science Institute of Cosmo Canyon.”

“Boring,” Mara said. 

“Nap time,” said Haruka, wriggling further into her seat. Mr. Rauche frowned from the end of the row but with no clear target. 

The sky darkened and the stars came out, and the sun, and the moon, and the planets, one by one, including their own, lit with coils of glowing green. The younger children oohed and aahed like a chorus. The Lifestream cycle that everyone learned by pre-school played out before their eyes, above their heads, larger than life. “You are about to experience the world the way the Cetra did long ago. You are about to experience the natural beauty and wonder of the Planet.”

“Two natural beauties spotted to the right, second row,” Mara whispered. 

Haruka leaned up a little to see. “Which one is the ponytail one again?” Wyndie glared and shushed her. 

“Rei,” Mara said. “Better cool it, Roach looks like he’s gonna have a stroke.”

Haruka settled back into her seat. It was too dark to see anything much beside the giant screen overhead. With the soft pleather seats, inclined just so, and the soothing ambient sounds of nature, she could feel herself drifting off already. “Think the Cetra were always dreaming like this?” she whispered. “Doesn’t seem so bad. Don’t know why humanity gave it up.”

“Flush toilets,” Mara said and they stifled their giggles which Mr. Rauche tapped his foot.

On the screen ahead the Lifestream cycle played out over and over in so many ways, from tiny one-celled bacteria to plants that bloomed in a riot of color and died and became fish that became birds that became humans, who became Lifestream all over again. “Damn,” Mara said. “They haven’t changed this part since I was a kid.”

“You remember it?”

Mara shrugged. “I was real little. I don’t remember anything else.” She glanced down the row, following the curve of it. “Huh. Looks like the twins think it’s boring too.”

“How can you tell?” Haruka squinted into the dark down the row. “Oh, eyes closed. I get it.”

“Will you two fucking hush?” Wyndie said.

“Yeah, not cool,” Greig Alkham whispered from the other side. “I’ve never been here.”

Mara and Haruka scoffed but quieted, besieged from all sides. Haruka sank back in to her chair and closed her eyes. The twins had the right idea, maybe, sleeping through all the routine junk about the Calamity from the sky and the wounded world. That was baby stuff. She’d had a coloring book about it when she was five. 

“Dear friends of the Planet,” said the recorded voice, a little softer now, “you are about to hear the Planet’s voice.” The dome went dark again, lit only by the emergency lighting strips running along the floor. As a unit the audience breathed. Then the song began. 

It was a hum, long and slow, multi-layered and deep. Higher tones joined in at intervals and made brief random trills. It played for a full minute to the backdrop of a time-lapsed Junon day. The scene shifted to the warm jungles of Gongaga. It might have been imagination, but the song changed too, a little faster, lighter, higher in pitch. Still no tune or rhythm though. 

They cycled through the song of Wutai, and of Kalm, of the harsh, nearly grieving tones of Icicle village, and the deep sureness of Cosmo Canyon itself, where a hologram of Bugenhagen sat in his observatory, turning his ear to something that worried him. They were drawn backwards across the sea to the cliffs overlooking the old city, still glittering with its poisonous artificial lights. And the song turned to a groan.

Over in the kindergarten section, some of the smaller children began to cry. One of the twins, the ponytail one, got up out of his seat and went over, kneeling down in front the crying children, and talking to them for a while. Mara narrowed her eyes and peered into the dark at him. “What’s he doing?”

“What’s what now?” Haruka did not budge from her seat.

The scene pulled away to space again, outside the Planet, past the moon, far away till the voice of the Planet faded and there was nothing but the glint of a swarm far off in the distance, deathly silent, and closing in. Something subaural thrummed up from the floor. The room vibrated with a rising dread, and then the screen went black. 

The lights came back on before anyone could scream, giant credits swirling across fields and sky. Some of the gathered students clapped and human voices replaced the Planet’s ponderous song. Haruka sighed and swung forward out of her chair, whipping out her phone in one smooth move. ‘Party at the Planetarium!!!111!!’ she posted, under a grinning selfie with Greig sleeping open-mouthed in the background. 

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen and others and in-betweeners,” Mr. Rauche, “two orderly lines to the exits, no straying. Come on, now.”

“That was shorter than I thought it would be,” Mara said, edging through the row. 

Haruka shrugged. “It was pretty nice, though. And we got a whole day out of class for it.”

Mara snorted. “There’s that. Huh. Looks like Greig’s not the only one who fell asleep.” Over in the Junon Suther section, their staff chaperone was scolding the non-ponytail twin, who stretched and yawned and made some kind of snappy answer judging by the way the teacher stiffened and shook her hands at him. Ponytail, Rei, joined his brother and the teacher turned away, unable to deal with them both together. 

“Is that some kind of twin thing?” Haruka asked, as the final year boys shared a look and a mirrored shrug before joining the exit line. 

“Better than some kind of clone thing.” They made it to the aisle and inched forward to leave. 

There was a lot of general milling around in the lobby. They had an hour to roam before the bus was due back. All the other schools had the same idea. There was a lunch counter selling a suspicious-looking ‘Cetran Salad’ and a pretty decent ‘Planet Panini’, among the usual selection of fruit, cookies and soda. The bathrooms had more nature sounds playing in the background, including tropical rainshower, which Mara reasoned was to help the nervous public pissers along so they wouldn’t slow down the lines. The giftshop, the real moneymaker, was huge. 

“Should I get a pin?” Mara asked, spinning the racks around. “My parents will probably want proof that I learned something.”

“Hmm?” Haruka held up a tiny keychain shaped like an old-fashioned radio and pressed one of the buttons. A short clip of Planetsong played. Each button played a different piece, four in all. “I like this,” she said. “It’d be a good zipper pull on my backpack.”

“Got any other shapes? Oh, coloring books!” Mara picked one up and started to browse. “These adult coloring books aren’t too bad.”

“Really?” Haruka took a second look. Worlds away from the jumbo Planet Play and Activity book she’d had as a kid. “Gonna need some really fine markers for this.”

They saw Wyndie passing by the next aisle over. Haile was there too but all anyone could see was the very top of her big puff of hair. “I dunno,” she was saying, “if they’re calling it a song I was expecting something more singable.”

Wyndie shrugged. “Sounded just like it does on nature shows.”

“Yeah, I guess.” The puff of hair turned around in the aisle. “I just thought in the actual Planetarium there’d be… more. Hey, check it out, bamboo pen set.”

“Sweet.”

Haruka was still playing with her keychain. Mara settled on a notebook. At least it was useful. “Want to check out the audiofiles?” She drifted towards the sampling station. The numbered selection board listed nothing but relaxation files, sounds of nature, ambient noise, Planetsong for the really smitten.

Haruka shrugged. “Figures. I’m getting my little brother this coloring book. He’ll love it.”

Mara pressed one of the sample buttons and the song of the Great Woods near Cosmo began to play. At least that was what the button said. There really was no telling one set of low thrumming hums from the next. Mara huffed, blowing brown bangs out of her face. “It really isn’t singable, is it? How is this a song?”

“Beats me,” Haruka said, flipping through the coloring book. “But it does make you kinda… keep listening, doesn’t it?”

“I guess.” They stood in place and listed to the end of the thirty-second clip. Mara pressed another button and Haruka did not argue. The City of Edge this time. Maybe a little harsher in tone than the Great Woods, but if Mara hadn’t seen the names she did not think she would have known. Haruka chose the next one, Costa del Sol. 

Mara shook her head. “Still not singable.” And then when the timer reached fourteen, somehow it was. They turned, eyes following grey and blue and silver, two tall boys, walking out of step with each other, checking out the merchandise like everybody else. And they were humming, soft and quiet so they could only be heard up close, humming along with the Planetsong coming out of the small speaker, adding perfect melody and harmony to what the Planet had to say.


	6. Heiress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lowly, undervalued stockbroker tries to do her best for her clients, even after they're dead.

“And Marcie, you’ll be handling the individual accounts from Shinra Electric Co.” 

“Great.” Marcie smiled. On the outside. Word had come down that the higher-ups didn’t think she smiled enough for a pretty girl, and she really should. Nobody liked a sourpuss. And to have any accounts solo instead of being tagged on as an assistant, that was a step up, even if they were the small, individual accounts to broker. 

Walter, now he had lucked out. He was handling Corel Coal. They were a big firm, and he was up to it. Sure, he had graduated way below her in class, and they had been hired at the same time, but it was how you did at the actual job that counted. He had the stuff. She had to work at it, so her supervisor said. She couldn’t remember Walter ever even being handed a small account. She had yet to be assigned a big one. 

The individual accounts were an oddity, though, a real proving ground. Most of Junon Financial’s clients were companies in their own right, or extremely well-to-do. These people from Shinra, they were just workers. Highly ranked workers. Very valued workers, clearly, if the company president was willing to go so far to keep them on, paying them in stocks and securities in addition to cold, hard cash. Probably not enough green to go around, Marcie reasoned. She’d heard the company’s R&D team was sucking up most of it. 

She got on the phone. Heidegger she crossed off the list right away. He was not interested in talk. It was the same with the one called Hollander, though he was more polite about it. “I trust you to handle that side of it,” he said. 

And so on, up and down the list, until she got to a man called Gast. “What? You want to come in?” She scrambled for a pen and paper. The dialing part of her finger pressed smooth and flat against the pen barrel as she wrote in her day planner. “Yes, Thursday’s fine. After five?” Her mother would have to take the tram to her sewing circle, but that was the job. “See you then.”

And Doctor Gast was quite a gentleman, not too old, and very interested in the particulars of the portfolio the company had created for him. “I think it’s their substitute for a retirement plan, to be honest,” he said, chuckling, “but I expect that will change once the new lines of research start paying off.”

They went over the details about the institute’s fee, any commission, any changes he was allowed. “Much of these are the same stocks Shinra Sr. himself owns,” she said, “good blue chip stocks that have seen him through starting his own company. I expect you’ll be in a similar position in the long-run, if you hold on to certain things.”

Investment wasn’t Gast’s area, but family certainly was. He had a wife and they were trying for a baby. “It’s all for them,” he said, “them and the grandkids. How do we set that up?” They went through the options again and again, until he was happy with it. He wasn’t a fussy man, but he did need matters of finance explained in the simplest terms. In the end he had his dividends diverted to an insured account, to accrue more interest until the time was right. “Well, I’m satisfied,” he said at length, chuckling again. “If anyone tries to bump me off early, at least the kids will have a little something.”

He called her now and then for general advice or information. He was the only one who did. She got a company account eventually. Corel Coal got placed in her hands. Walter was handling Shinra now. The research was apparently ‘paying off’, and they were turning into a heavy hitter. Marcie thanked her stars and did what she could for Corel Coal, even though the added Shinra individual accounts swamped her in paperwork. 

The second-to-last time Dr. Gast called, it was a courtesy. “Do I need to come in and sign anything for the changes?” he asked, voice still rough and broken. Marcie thought she had seen the announcement in the papers. Her mother read that section religiously, looking for old friends.

“The wording only says ‘spouse and dependents’,” she said, “No name, so there’s no real rush, under the circumstances. Please, take your time. I am so sorry to hear.” The Gast name was in the papers again some time after, some major scientific discovery or the other, but Walter had been caught for insider trading and was let go. With all the hushed-up internal scandal there, had not been much time to attend to anything else. She handled his accounts in the interim but they went to Brandt afterwards. She couldn’t see why. He was still pretty new. 

The last time Gast called, it was years later, both a courtesy and a warning. “I meant to come in and sign new papers,” he said, “but I have a spouse again, and a baby on the way.” She could feel the man glowing over the phone, and silently wished him better luck this time around. “But listen,” he said, and his voice grew quiet, almost beneath the crackle of the poor connection. “Shinra, I don’t think it’s a great investment in the long run,” he said, “There are things happening in R&D, and it will all go to hell when that comes out.”

He did not say more. He did not say more, ever. There was an announcement in the papers, two days after her mother’s, and no word about an actual funeral. Just as well, the office was moving to a spot in the new city, and it was a busy time for everyone. ‘And spouse’ did not trouble them immediately, too busy with the funeral arrangements.

Marcie got new accounts in Midgar, mostly for individuals, ever on the stockbroker side of things. It wasn’t so bad. There was client who insisted she call him ‘Don’ and she wore long loose slacks when she had to meet with him despite Junon Financial’s official stance on female employees wearing stockings and skirts. ‘Don’, she encouraged to invest heavily in Shinra. It made him filthy rich and she did not care. The more money he had the less he bothered her, and besides, Gast’s words still rang in her ear.

When Dusty Trent, Investment Banker, accosted her in the elevator it was too much. She kneed him in the groin and ran. He pressed charges of assault, but for once the luck was on her side. They’d installed security cameras just the month before, and Big Greta, from security, helped her secure a copy of the incident before the original version ‘disappeared’. It was more scandal and noise than Marcie had ever hoped for in her life. Nothing next to the war in the news, of course, and angled to make her look like a tart. She took her vacation days and went back to Junon to lay flowers on her mother’s grave. Then she came back, starched her spine and went to court. 

The settlement didn’t exactly make her filthy rich, not compared to the Shinra money being flung around them every day, but she was comfortable. She considered quitting and opening a book store somewhere, but there was something about the way Brandt looked at her now that she had won the case. He looked afraid. She liked it. And she liked talking to Greta on an early morning, and her clients who weren’t total dicks. She was going down her endless lists one day when she found the doctor’s old portfolio. According to the terms, ‘and spouse’ was to have the bulk of it, but she had not come in yet. There was no name, no number, but surely somebody had been executor of the man’s will. Maybe the widow was just biding her time and coming to terms. Whenever she did feel ready, she would have a tidy sum waiting.

Corel Coal crumbled unexpectedly. It had nothing to do with Marcie, or JF, or anything, really. Mine fire, that was the word. The company folded, and with it went one of Marcie’s oldest accounts. All assets were merged with Shinra, and that was the end of it. With the slight increase in free time, she did a little digging. Dr. Gast’s spouse, one Ifalna, strange name as it was, did in fact survive him, but beyond the name and an address in Icicle, there was nothing. Marcie tried to phone twice, but nobody answered. There was a note in the records of a child, a girl, but she did not even have a name according to the public record. 

No matter, Marcie thought, going over the terms, clear as day. The portfolio still sat, blue chip stocks in oil, gas, chocobos, doing what they would do. The whimsical choice of shares in a hydroelectric venture and a fuel made from corn sugar floundered along as best they could, the technology never catching on with anyone but the most remote of agriculturists, but Gast had had enough to toss one in the wild if he pleased, at the time. Marcie threw a little bit of settlement money that way herself, for a laugh.

Marcie checked the public record once or twice a year, hoping for a phone number, or an updated address. She toyed with the idea of hiring a private detective, but any inquiries about doing it on the company dime died out quickly, with firm words from high up not to go messing with things. She could afford it herself, she figured, but what was the point. 

Then the record changed. Ifalna Gast was dead. The child, however, ‘and dependents’, she lived, and when she turned eighteen she would be one well-set little girl. No one came on her behalf, and considering how those things usually went, that was probably for the best. Marcie got a few larger clients, people who were wealthy off Shinra, who wanted more of Shinra, because Shinra didn’t pay in stock anymore, not when there was all that cash. She scraped the best she could for them because it was the job. Reactor shares, both in and out of Midgar. SciTech and robotics. Things related to war. That was hot stuff, now. Marcie contented herself with her Nut Crunch fund. She had earned that.

She held out maybe eight years before she got sick of it all. Avalanche was bringing fresh hell to the city, and to Shinra. Midgarian stocks dipped with every bomb, and Marcie’s nerves went with them. She stared at her new computer screen, with the thoughtful anti-glare guard, and her shiny new smart phone with six ‘missed’ calls from ‘Don’ and decided it wasn’t worth it to be stuck in place any more. Brandt was just below the vice president now, and she was where she had always been. She wrote a letter and packed up her desk, and her apartment, and her cats, told the new girl who got her accounts about where to shop for good palazzo pants, and went home to the old place,

Junon had changed. The fisheries had been suffering, she knew that, but to see it, smell it herself, made it harsh and real. She opened her book shop in the good part of town, but most of that had turned to military now, and soldiers didn’t read all that much. Copies of Loveless kept moving, though, many of them sold to a redheaded guy who must have been using them for toilet paper the way he kept buying them. She fed her cats and stayed afloat, and when the internet came to the civilian side of things, did a little casual searching for old times’ sake. 

There was plenty about the good doctor. Years of research, breakthroughs and finds. Most of it was behind a paywall and she was not affiliated with a university, so she read the few lines she could and searched for more. She found his alleged family tree, available in full for payment, an archived newspaper photo of his first wedding, in the ‘I Do’s’, the death announcement of his first wife, and, she assumed, the child that had gone with her. Of the second wife, there was still only a name. ‘Deceased’, said the public record, such as it was. There wasn’t even a picture, as if the woman did not exist. The child was never listed by name. Marcie sold a couple copies of Loveless and a few magazines and did the math in her head. It would be nearing time, and the child, while mentioned, was not listed as dead anywhere that Marcie could see. 

The war ended. Shinra’s war profits declined. Marcie bought a few shares in a solar energy company, on a lark. Then the meteor came. Marcie locked up the book shop and held her cats through the worst of it. She opened the door to a different world. 

The phone call was unexpected. Junon Financial had survived, somewhat, though most of their clients, individuals and companies both, had not. They were moving the head office back to the old place in Junon, and would she please come back, under the circumstances? They had lost most of the staff too. Marcie shed a tear for Greta. She didn’t give a crap about Brandt. 

She stepped back in, part time, just to get a glimpse of things from the inside. Midgar was a mess. Shinra as they knew it was gone. All those investments had gone up in lifestream and smoke. There were survivors and descendants to find, and nexts-of-kin to contact as per any legal arrangements, if any record survived. Marcie went back to her bookstore before the work was done. It would take years for things to return to former efficiency and she did not have the heart for it anymore, but she had worked well with the girl who had taken over her old accounts in Midgar. Patricia stopped by the bookstore on occasion, and kept her in the know. 

“You know that really old account you had?” Patricia said one evening, “the one for the professor who died?”

“Dr. Gast?” Marcie said. “What about it?”

Patricia shrugged. “Nothing much. Daughter’s still listed as alive, so I guess she wasn’t in Midgar when stuff went sideways. But still no address or number though.”

“And the account?” Marcie pried.

“Fatter than ever,” Patricia said, draining her tea. “Tell you what, when Miss Gast finally decides to make an appearance, she’s going to be one well-off woman.”


End file.
